


Good Night

by Draikinator



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Child Neglect, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Past Child Abuse, Post pacifist, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Second Person, pre game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-05-01 01:15:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5186645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draikinator/pseuds/Draikinator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years later, things are going well for everyone after monsters have settled on the surface, but just because people don't talk about old wounds doesn't mean they're not there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Night

You scuff your feet against the pavement, trying not to look lost, but it’s difficult not to give off that impression, when you are. The next bus comes. The next bus leaves. No one asks you if you’re alone. No one asks if you need help.

The bus stop is empty, and you squeeze your eyes shut, listening to the hum of cicadas in the treeline, the chirp of evening birds and trickle of water in the drain. The smell of dew and wet earth fills your senses, and it’s easy to pretend for a minute that you’re standing in a magical forest in a storybook instead of a bus stop outside of the city.

You open your eyes. The sky is turning purple.

* * *

 

You’re whisking the batter, left arm wrapped around the tin bowl, sleeves pushed up past your elbows, covered in flour, when Sans steps into the kitchen. He’s telling a joke of some kind that you don’t hear, because you’ve got an mp3 player on the counter next to the jar of washed snails playing pop music a little loudly. He freezes when he sees you, an old look in his eyes that you’d almost actually forgotten about, and you drop the bowl dodging a hiccup of a gasterblast he can’t stop in time.

He keeps apologizing, wiping flour off your face almost desperately with his sleeves, and you’re really more upset about spilling the pie crust batter all over the floor than the fact he shot at you, because you know Sans, and Sans knows you know Sans but he won’t shut up and stop saying sorry, anyway.

You go shower off the flour and let him clean up the scorch mark and spilled batter in the kitchen because you think it will make him feel better, but this isn’t one of those problems you can solve, and you think that all you can do is move on, and not tell Momma.

* * *

 

You ball your hands into fists in your pockets, and then release, let your shoulders shake and legs tremble as the wave of crushing isolation washes over you. This is the third time this week your mother has “forgotten” to pick you up from somewhere remote and scary. You weren’t sure at first, but you are now, that she’s doing it on purpose.

You think, for a moment, a little unkindly, that maybe you’ll run off into the woods and fall into a hole and when they find your body they’ll throw her in jail for forever, but you stay at the bus stop instead, and when the next bus comes you take it back to town and away from the park. You’ve never taken this bus before, but you know how to read a map and ask for directions, and that’s all you really need.

The door isn’t locked, and you pass the door to your mother’s room, where she’s almost definitely sleeping, and close the door to your own behind you, before crawling into bed without saying good night.

* * *

 

When you trot back into the room, still patting your mousey brown hair dry, he’s pulling ingredients out of the cabinet. He looks like a lost puppy, checking and rechecking the phone you’ve left on the counter- you move to his side and read over his shoulder. He’s pulled up a recipe on the internet for apple pie, and you laugh- it’s all wrong for snail pie. You gently move him from the pantry and pull things back out from where you’d put them away earlier.

His shoulders look heavy, and he looks like he’s going to leave, but you smile consolingly and nod at the bowl in the sink, “Aww, Sans, what’s the batter?” He snorts despite himself and the mood shifts, if only just so. You show him how to mix the crust and then the filling, and by the time you actually add the snails he’s smiling and humming and making gags again like his usual self.

Toriel will be home in an hour or so, and the pie won’t be cool by then, but you wanted it for after dinner, anyway, so no harm done.

* * *

 

You wake up confused. It’s definitely a school day and it’s definitely day time, but your mother didn’t wake you up to take you. You are a little hesitant to leave your room, in case it’s a snow day or something (in summer?) and you would have been able to sleep in a little more, but you push the door open and look around anyway. The hallway is quiet, the door to your mother’s room is still closed. You walk out of the hall and see the kitchen table cleared off, and the trash from the fridge next to the recycling bin of green glass bottles next to the door. The photos are gone from the coffee table, the tv is not on its stand in the corner. Your mother’s shoes are not by the door.

You peek outside, but her car is not in the driveway. No one’s is. You go back to the hall, and open the door to your mother’s room.

She’s gone.

* * *

 

Papyrus comes over for dinner, and compliments your spaghetti so loudly you’re sure the neighbors can hear it. Or would, if Papyrus and Sans weren’t your neighbors and already in your apartment. Saturday nights were always spaghetti and snails nights and it was Toriel’s turn to pick this week’s movie. It’s a g rated disney cartoon, like usual, and you’ve already seen it, but Undyne hasn’t yet, and you know that princess movies always make her emotional in the funniest ways. Alphys points out parallels between plot twists and animes she likes while Sans makes puns about woodland creatures and Papyrus screams over the dialogue. You’re glad you put subtitles on.

You kind of wish Asgore would come to these things, but you suspect Toriel’s asked him not to. You’ve never asked her.

She’s delighted by the pie, but she always is, and you’re the only one who doesn’t have a slice (though, you never really did acquire the taste for snails), and you’re certain everyone’s in high spirits until it’s just you and Sans, who’s still lingering in your apartment, eyes wavering uncertainly. He wants to ask something and you’re pretty sure you know what, but you aren’t sure you want to have this conversation, now, or ever. You want to tell him to go home, but you never tell him to go home when he clearly doesn’t want to and you can’t bring yourself to now.

You put the empty pie tin in the trash and stack the plates from the table in the sink. He rings his boney hands together anxiously, avoiding you until you come back around the bar between your kitchen and living room and take them in yours reassuringly.

“It’s okay,” you say, but it’s probably not, “You can ask.”

“What was it like to kill me?”

* * *

 

You spend the first two nights in your house, but the power goes out on the second morning and she’s clearly not coming back. You aren’t sure what to do. The mail is piling up in the box by the road and you’ve finished all the food. There wasn’t much- some canned vegetables, white bread, rice (but you didn’t really know how to cook it and ended up ruining it), a little cold pizza.

You know you should probably tell a grown up, but your mother took her phone and you don’t have one to call 9-1-1 and you don’t know your neighbors. You don’t like talking to strangers.

You think back to when you were standing at the busstop and how you imagined running away into the woods, and how they’d find your body there and then she’d get into trouble. At first it sounded like a mean thought, but you were feeling particularly hurt and mean now, so you stuffed your pockets with change from the couch and took the bus back to the playground she’d left you at that afternoon.

It’s still drizzling, dreary weather with dim-grey skies and lazy fat clouds, the smell of earthy summer rot in the old wooden playground. The bus leaves and you consider running, right now, eyes closed, until something stopped you, but you chew your lip, nervous, and turn to the playground instead. You spend the night in the highest part of the wooden play castle and wake up damp and hungry and miserable and decide this was a really bad idea. You go to wait at the bus stop, but you’ve run out of money and you’re too embarrassed to tell the bus driver, so you decide to hike back straight through the trees to your house. It will probably take all day, but it’s not like your mom will be there to scold you for being late.

* * *

 

“…Bad,” you say, softly, “it was my hands, but it wasn’t me. Like a bad dream, only it wasn’t.” You look down at your hands instead of his face, “You were brave though. Probably the only one who could have really stopped me, if I hadn’t cheated. You were ready to do anything to stop me.”

“I killed you,” he says. It’s not a question.

“A few times. More than a few. Like I said. You were probably the only one who could have stopped me. Would have, if I hadn’t been so-” you sigh over the word, resigned, “Determined.”

“I remember, sometimes. Not all the way- like. I see, uh, knives, in the kitchen, and I get like, almost deja vu, I guess, just for a moment, and it feels so awful. Or I see you covered in flour and I forget it isn’t-”

“Hey,” you say, and tighten your grip on his hands, “it isn’t, though. We made it out. Everyone is okay.”

There’s a long pause and you both know the question is coming. You’d avoided it for years but you can tell now, he needs to know. You can’t keep this to yourself anymore.

“Frisk…” He says, and finally looks up at you, and you can see that need to know within his expression, “Why did you climb Mt. Ebott?”

* * *

 

You’re lost.

The sun has long set beyond the crest of the mountain’s ridge, and the steady hum of insects has only risen with the moon as the night has washed over you. It’s cold, and though the rain has stopped, the ground is moist and so are you, after you’ve stepped through too many shadow-covered puddles in the dirt. You’ve entirely lost your way in the dark.

There’s a massive crater in the ground, pitch black in depth and covered in old, dead roots. The third time you pass it, you realize you are going in useless circles, and you sit down and cry.

You hope that someone will hear you wailing and find you, and then take you home and everything will be fine, but no one does. You cry until you’ve cried yourself out and you’re exhausted and then you stand, and you look at the hole, and you remember your first plan.

You stand at the edge of the abyss and look into the murky depths, but you can’t see a bottom. The stars are twinkling over you. The insects are singing good night. Your feet slip, maybe by accident, and you let gravity tuck you in like your mother used to, when you were smaller, and less of a burden.

You give up.

* * *

 

You tell him everything.

You tell him about your young mother who worked two jobs and the trailer park you lived in and the neighbors you didn’t speak to and you tell him about the men she’d bring home that never stayed and you tell him about cold pizza every night for two weeks and days you missed school because no one was there to take you and green glass bottles and bus stops and how no one had come for you when you came back an ambassador to the entire monster kingdom. You tell him about the insect’s lullaby and how your feet slipped, or didn’t, and the way Toriel held your hand and led you home.

You can see his eyes flickering but he keeps his bony face stoic until you finish, word vomit finished, feeling empty, and then he hugs you, and there’s the strangest comfort in feeling his rib cage biting into you through his jacket. It’s just so uniquely Sans.

You realize you don’t want to let go for a moment and he doesn’t make you and for the first time in, well, ever, you let yourself be sad about what happened to you, and you sob into his jacket for what feels like hours but is probably minutes, and when you finally pull back, you’re kind of amazed to realize that you do, actually, feel better.

“I am so, so glad,” you say, hoarse, “that I have you all as my family. I’m so glad I ran into the woods that day. I’m so glad I fell. I’m so glad I never gave up again.”

His smile twitches, and softens, “Me too, kiddo. I’m glad I know ya. I spent a long time down there thinkin’ I’d gave up, but, uh, in retrospect? I think I was always almost there but never, you know. Quite. Feelin’ the sunshine on these old bones really reminded me of why I tried so hard in the first place.”

“I’m sorry I made you kill me,” you say.

“I’m sorry I killed you,” he says.

He goes home and you fall asleep feeling weightless, untethered.

Good night.


End file.
